


The Weather in Europe

by Snyuuk



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Prohibition Era AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-19
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 06:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snyuuk/pseuds/Snyuuk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a moment you wonder, really wonder, if the girl who had shook your hand so gently, and the woman who whispers in your ear so lowly, are truly the same person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weather in Europe

**Author's Note:**

> Since we're allowed to post our first round HSO entries, I thought I'd join in and post mine here as well! So, here's to fit the HSO prompt: Gambling. For team DadRoxy!

The only reason you find yourself agreeing to head down the set of stairs that lead to the underground cavern of smoke, noise, and the people who make both, were the few words uttered from your friend's mouth when he pats you on the back with a weak smile.

"Only time I needed a drink this bad is when we were getting shot at back in Germany."

"We're not getting shot at." You replied with a sigh which he mirrors with almost double the exertion.

"If only."

So you order a cheap scotch through the screen of exhaled tobacco and protest only to yourself when tonight's poker night is shared with strangers--the kind of people who are not here on a whim and who are not strangers to the world below civilian feet. Your poker face is only subpar and your luck is hardly even that--something you hadn't minded when you were betting pennies and meal tickets but something that terrifies you under the hardened eyes of hardened men who barely see you over their numbers and suits. How you had been coerced into believing this would be relaxing after another week of not getting shot at, you will never know.

It's even less so when she appears.

Her eyes and lips painted with years you know she couldn't have, and her fingers supporting a cigarette holder that leaks the smoke that helps overwhelm the already suffocating atmosphere. But, at first, you see none of this. All you feel are slender arms on your shoulders, and a pair of lips that dance near your ear.

"Go for the straight." And the warmth of what you assume to be her mouth is replaced by the cool feeling of glass as she takes a sip of her sullied drink. You want to protest; you want to say you have this game under control so if you wouldn't mind, miss, but you don't. So you put down the pair of misfit jacks in your hand, go for the straight, and win the pot.

"Come on, Rox. Don't need your shit taintin' a man's match here." One of the burlier men growls, and it takes you a moment to realize that the name his gruff voice scratched out is matched with the guiding voice by your ear.

"I don't know what you're sayin'. Just givin' a little incentive." You swear the words had not been as high and airy when they were instructing you so expertly. When you turn she's winking as she takes another sip of her drink and you try not to stare for too long. Her eye finally meet yours, though, and a part of you realizes that you are looking into the painted face of a child (distantly you wonder if she is taking in the lines around your mouth and eyes that she doesn't have and is realizing something similar), but if she won't admit it you don't see why you have to, either.

\----------------------------

She lingers around your ear for the rest of the night, whispering encouragement and advice that works nearly every time until the two strangers you had been playing with leave with colorful words directed at the girl.

Your friend leaves without you, but not without an amused shake of his head and a passive wave at you both.

She never introduces herself, but that's alright because you know her name from the way the men used it as a slur, and she knows yours from the way your friend called after you, shocked that your luck had improved so drastically within that night.

Instead of meager introductions, and lulling conversations about the weather, you talk of liquor and Europe and gambling and talkies. Her voice is in constant flux between sultry and giggly and slurred and sharp. The gin that you watch slide down her throat is something you might attribute that to.

You watch her for hours, only partly processing that you respond with each pause in her speech, and take in the way the beads on her dress clash together lightly as she gestures and fidgets and crosses her legs. The feathers in her bobbed hair flinch with each laugh that spills from her chest, and after observing her for so long, you come to realize that nothing about this woman is still.

You also realize this is the only place in the world where she could truly be considered a woman.

When you part ways she kisses you on the cheek and tells you, with no hint of shy or shame, to not make yourself a stranger. The sun is rising by the time you head home, and you tread the scent of cigarettes, liquor, and perfumed jazz behind you.

\---------------------------------------

Three days later you receive a letter from your mother with a check included for Jane's schooling among the endless typewriter lines of resentment and condescension. You read the letter, like you do with every one she sends, rub at your eyes and put on your uniform for a job that pays enough to feed one.

You work hard and you do your job well, but the fact remains that the same sweat and blood that won a war is the same that is overlooked and disregarded upon your return. Your legs are constantly tired, and your neck is constantly stiff, but Jane is always there when you come home, and that makes it worth it. She'll never know how much more she gives you than you give her, and you bow your head at your poor attempts at fatherhood every night when you wipe your feet on the dirty mat before your door.

The day after you receive the letter when you return home Jane has brought a friend along with her.

The blonde curls that bob against her cheeks, and the bright eyes that yield unshielded youth through her undone lashes and eyelids cause you to lose track of what your daughter was saying when she introduces the two of you.

Her name is Roxy Lalonde. Something you knew but weren't supposed to.

When you shake her hand, it's soft and small and you inwardly tear away at yourself for not wanting to let it go. But this is a different hand she's dealt you. You aren't supposed to know the cards held in her well manicured fingers, just as she isn't supposed to know the ones in worn and calloused ones.

"It's very nice to meet you, Mr. Crocker."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, too." You mean every word.

\------------------------------------------

When you return to the speakeasy to seek her company, neither of you bring up the separate meeting. As far as you're both concerned, it doesn't exist in this world. And though you know she attends the school your daughter does, attends the same classes, and wears the same cotton uniform, you don't ask her the routine questions you find yourself muttering to Jane's other friends--you don't ask her age, or of her schoolwork, or of the plans she has once the last few months of her senior year come to a close.

Instead, this time, you sit a little closer, she speaks a little softer, and her hands feel a little warmer when she brushes them against your hand, your thigh, your arm.

"Glad to see you came back 'round here. Thought you washed your hands of this place"

For a moment you wonder, really wonder, if the girl who had shook your hand so gently, and the woman who whispers in your ear so lowly, are truly the same person. When she sips at her drink and puts her hand on your knee, you genuinely believe for the rest of that night that your eyes were playing tricks on you--because she speak of France, and jazz, and politics, and trips on her feet after saucing up a bit too much. She's gorgeous and intense and overwhelming and exasperating with how she brushes away any sort of authority in your voice and replaces it with gentle tones and laughter that was meant to be hushed.

And you don't mean to imply that the friend that Jane brought over just a couple days ago isn't any of those things.

It's just that you talked about the weather.

\---------------------------------------------

"Where you headed, Mr. C?" She kneels on the couch, her arms resting on the back of it as she watches you zip up your jacket. You wish Jane hadn't had to run to the store, and you feel pathetic at realizing that you, as a grown man, can't handle the presence of a seventeen year old girl in your house. Pathetic and disgusting.

"Poker night with the boys." You glance at her pale hands, the curve of her neck, the bob in her hair, the line between her lips, the cards in your hand, and for the briefest moment, consider cheating. "Ever play?"

Her lips tighten and for a moment you see the same look that graces you so often at the speaky, the one that's dark and wide and wanting, but it's only for a moment. She laughs as she turns to sit on the couch the correct way, giving you a passive wave.

"No way, card games ain't my bag." You wonder if she's lying.

You wonder if your poker face has slipped from its mediocre ranking, leaving you bare and exposed as she raises the stakes higher with each hand. You wonder if your poor luck has translated between a juggling of these two different worlds--these two different women.

Silence passes between the two of you, but her face turns red when she turns to see you still staring at her blankly, your eyes fixed on her as you were lost in your mind.

It makes you wonder if your luck has improved solely because she's here too.

\-----------------------------------

Your lips connect to hers the next time you meet in the speakeasy and she responds almost eagerly, in a way you don't think this Roxy would.

And it makes your hands (the same hands that ran through her hair and down her sides and along her back) clam up when you realize that you don't care which Roxy responded to your kiss.

Just as long as _she_ did.

And the fact that you're finding the line that separates a world dictated by the moon, and a world dictated by normalcy and reality and conversations that comfort rather than excite, harder and harder to distinguish means that you might be losing this unrelenting game.

You consider folding but you've already put everything in, and there's no reason for you to stop when you've never enjoyed a game of poker more.

\------------------------------------

You get too carried away. The only thing that comforts you in this is that so does she.

\------------------------------------

"You just watch, I'm gonna go to France, and I'm gonna eat French foods, and drink French wine, and not give a damn when I do it."

"What a youthful dream."

"C'mon, haven't you ever wanted to go somewhere, or do somethin' other than drink a lil scotch behind uncle Sammy's back?"

"I suppose. I'm not filled with the same fire as you are, Roxy. Growing up will do that to any person."

"You just got tired, father time."

"We all get tired in the end."

"Yeesh, what a downer. I'm thinkin' someone's ready for round three."

"I think I've had enough."

"I think you haven't."

"What makes you say that?"

"Cause you're not gonna dance with me if you're this sober."

You laugh.

"I could always just play ya in a round of poker, if you wanted to instead."

"No going, miss Roxy."

"You're just scared you're gonna lose."

"I think I would rather dance with you."

"Even sober?"

"Even sober."

\----------------------------------------

When you're finally allowed to kiss and touch her out of sight of the watchful eyes of the people who blend in with the blaring trumpets in the speakeasy, you find yourself wanting her too much. Needing her too much.

Wherever you are, it's someplace foreign to you both.

That night you wonder which Roxy you're holding, which Roxy you're drawing in closer, closer, closer. You wonder which Roxy you want it to be. Because one is exciting and beautiful and interesting and funny and talks endlessly without once giving into silence that isn't weighted with heavy gaze. But that Roxy isn't real. You're not allowed her. You've created an entire world and an entire life just to be with her.

Yet the friend that Jane brings with her so frequently is just as charming, and you know can be all those things even if you're not supposed to know it. She's the child you know she really is, and it pains you that at some point you just accepted that they were the same, even if you can tell she tried so hard to keep both of her conflicting personas in separate lives where they could never find each other.

But you've fallen love with one which means you've fallen in love with both.

You don't know how to tell her that without folding your hand, so you kiss her with ease and touch her with gentility and understanding.

She's uncomfortable because she wanted you to jazz up the woman with the painted face only, not have you make love to one broken girl in neutral territory.

But she can't say anything without folding her hand.

She can't say anything without admitting that she maybe fell in love with one man, too.

\----------------------------------------

The next day she comes very close to kissing you on the cheek, almost absentmindedly. She turns bright red because she's still in her cotton uniform. You smile, fold your hand, and kiss her on the forehead.

\----------------------------------------

The next time you meet her at the speakeasy you talk about the weather and you find yourself engrossed in the conversation.

**Author's Note:**

> Perhaps a longer fleshier fic of this universe coming soon.


End file.
